Conference Presenter:
Randy Adams
Research Professor
Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabaco
Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico
drrandocan@hotmail.com

Primary Author:
Francisco J. Guzmán-Osorio
PhD Candidate
Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco
Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico

Co-Authors:
Verónica Isidra Domínguez-Rodríguez, and Carlos Ernesto Lobato-García; Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco, Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico
Armando Guerrero Peña, Colegio de Postgraduados, Campus Tabasco, Cárdenas, Tabasco, Mexico

Many remediation projects are focused almost exclusively on lowing the hydrocarbon concentration to some permissible level according to local environmental legislation. In most areas, this is primarily to limit leachates to groundwater and protect the community from harmful effects to human health. This is adequate for many urban sites, but almost all crude oil spills occur in rural areas. In these areas, it is also important to protect the ability of the soil to grow pastures or crops, and most environmental norms and regulations are not focused on these kinds of impacts. It has been shown that besides toxicity and leachates, impacts to soil fertility caused by physical-chemical changes in the soil by the hydrocarbons, need to be addressed to really restore soil function to pre-spill conditions. In the last ten years approximately, there have been important advances in soil research that has shown that the degree of the soil fertility impacts caused by crude oil spills is related to the kind of oil, especially the °API of the oil in the soil. This presentation discusses these issues and poses novel methods for determining °API of oil in soil, including the dilution-extrapolation method and the use of FTIR for quick determinations.